Coff's Harbor to Brisbane

We have spent the last few days driving up the East Coast of Australia and are now in Brisbane. The highlight of the drive for me was our stop in a town called Byron Bay. It is a relatively small beach town at the Northern edge of New South Wales. It had a great beach with good sized waves and slow drop off allowing you to wade pretty far out into the surf. I spent an hour body surfing and it probably would have been a good place to learn to surf if I had more time. There also happened to be a great dive site just a 5 minute boat ride off shore and on a whim I decided to dive the next morning. It was a pretty good dive with starfish about the size of manhole covers, tons of colorful fish, and two octopi. Supposedly there had been a giant ray in the area, but it wasn't around during my dive.



At the southern edge of Queensland we passed through the gold coast, the heart of which is a city called Surfer's Paradise. For the Washingtonians, think Ocean City on Steroids. We didn't stay very long.


For the last two days we have been in Brisbane which is the biggest city in Queensland. It is a pretty nice place, a big city on a river with a fairly relaxed atmosphere. The first night as we were walking through a park we noticed a few large birds flying around (they looked like large crows). One came crashing down into tree next to us and to our surprise, these were not birds, but huge bats. Needless to say, we did not take the same route through the park last night, but we noticed them flying all over the city anyway. Kat tried to take a picture, but it really doesn't do them justice.


Tomorrow, we are going to drive up the coast to Gladstone where we will catch a boat to Heron Island which is a small island at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef. It is supposed to have world class diving and snorkeling and I am looking forward to it. From there it will be back to Sydney for one night before head off to Japan.

-AA